More than 300,000 students in California voted on their favorite books, and Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning won the California Young Reader Medal for the Intermediate category! I am thrilled and honored to announce this news--Violet Raines was my first book, and to have readers think so well of it is nothing short of wonderful.

Years ago, I was editing a piece and could not for the life of me decide upon the proper grammar for a certain phrase, a colloquialism I've seen written two ways. I thought if I could diagram the sentence, I would then know how to edit it, but even with the help of The Little, Brown Handbook and CMS, I couldn't figure it out.

I ended up on the phone with a Writer's Digest editor trying to determine the proper wording for this sentence:

I better be going
OR

I'd better be going.

The editor was nice and offered a lot of advice, but she was not able to diagram the sentence, either, and asked me why I needed to. I explained my endeavor to her.

"You can't diagram that phrase," she said. "It's a colloquialism." She advised thusly:
Use I better be going for informal prose, and I'd better be going for more formal prose.

I've followed her advice ever since, but it seems to me as if there's somehow an object in that phrase. It niggles at me. I better be going. Is this phrase actually shorthand, a phrase that represents a grammatically correct sentence from the old days, something like this: It is better for me to leave than to stay.

Better has to have a reason for being there. What do you think? Can you diagram this sentence?

Okay, folks, I found secret good news on the Internet, but I need to wait until I hear it officially, otherwise, I can't tell if I'm reading properly or just dreaming. I'm not sure, but I think something good has happened for this girl:

Stuff I can tell you:
The ARCs for A WHOLE LOT OF LUCKY came in yesterday! Here are the front and back covers:

A Whole Lot of Lucky

me & jack

The Summer of Moonlight Secrets

Violet

Scholastic Book Trailer for Violet Raines

Thoughts on Writing

"If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster." --Isaac Asimov

"It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up, because by that time I was too famous." --Robert Benchley

"When writers meet, they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B's. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B; if yes, then all is well." --Cyril Connolly"Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to." --Carl Van Doren

"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." --Gene Fowler"I always write a good first line, but I have trouble writing the others." --MoliFre

"What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window." --Burton Rascoe

"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else." --Gloria Steinem

"I love being a writer; what I can't stand is the paperwork." --Peter De Vries

"This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again." --Oscar Wilde"I will tell you a story." --Jesus (Matthew 21:28, CEV)